Uninsured Black Market Midwifery
21 March 2023
A pregnant woman (M) who entered into a contract with an independent English registered midwife (the Appellant) to provide services as her private midwife for her planned birth in France, later complained to the midwife and demanded a refund, and also pursued her complaint to the Nursing and Midwifery Council.
After a 12 day disciplinary process before a Fitness to Practise Panel, which the midwife did not attend, various charges were found proved and an order was made striking him from the register.
The Appellant laid nine grounds of appeal before the Administrative Court: Golden v Nursing and Midwifery Council [2023] EWHC 619 (Admin) Ritchie J
His Lordship observed that when making his submissions the Appellant tended to make grandiose statements without being able to substantiate them in the documentary or witness evidence. He relied on self-drafted multiple quasi-legal documents which he sent to the NMC at many stages of the disciplinary process, all of which were unhelpful and disruptive and none of which actually engaged with the substance of the charges he faced.
He sought to argue that insurance was not necessary for his work in France in the summer of 2019 and there was, to use his words “minimal risk” to the mother and the baby. The Appellant’s assertion was improper and unprofessional.
When dealing with the key charges of practising as a midwife without registration and without insurance, the Appellant shrugged off his responsibilities as if they were nothing more than chewing gum on his shoe. He downplayed the risks to the mother and the child of childbirth under his ill-written contract in a very troubling way which led the Court to consider that he was a potential danger to vulnerable women.
So where the Appellant’s evidence (unsworn and untested by cross-examination as it was) conflicted with evidence from the complainant or the expert, his Lordship generally preferred the evidence of those witnesses over his written assertions and had no reason to consider the Fitness to Practise Panel who came to the same conclusion were wrong to do so.
The findings in relation to all of the charges found proved by the FTPP were sound and correct save for one which was overturned. In relation to the finding of impairment of fitness to practise through misconduct, the panel’s reasoning was unimpeachable and justified by the evidence. In relation to the panel’s decision on continuing the hearing in the Appellant’s absence, the correct law was taken into account and the correct principles were applied.
The Appellant had been, and continued to be, obstructive and disruptive to the whole process and then deprived himself of the ability to test the NMC’s live and documentary evidence against him and called none of his own, not even himself. In relation to the decision to admit hearsay evidence from Miss C, the panel correctly considered the rules and the case law and reached a wholly justifiable case management decision.
The sanction of erasure from the register was appropriate and inevitable in particular because the Appellant’s uninsured, unregistered, black-market midwifery, carried out under a poorly drafted contract was a danger to M and her overdue child. Fortunately, no personal injury was suffered because M paid for a private scan and the birth was then induced at a French hospital.